


Later

by Piscaria



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:56:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3644325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piscaria/pseuds/Piscaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ciel is poisoned and Sebastian tends him quite attentively.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Later

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> This is for Sumi, who asked for Sebastian comforting Ciel after a nightmare. I hope you enjoy!

Later, Ciel will admit that he was, perhaps, a bit careless to have accepted the sweet from Lady Perard.

"Careless, Young Master?" Sebastian will respond, in a tone of icy composure that suggests he's considering rending Ciel limb from limb, contract or no. "Indeed, I'd say foolish is the more precise term, or perhaps even _naive._ One must wonder why you've taken such pains to guard yourself when you will happily take poison from an enemy's hand.

Ciel will narrow his eyes and spout off some nonsense about how it isn't any concern of his to make his servants' jobs easier. But he'll know Sebastian is right. For the Queen's Guard Dog to lower his hackles was foolish, even in his own home, carefully guarded by a trio of loyal servants and a contracted demon. Ciel knew better than anyone that Phantomhive Manor's sturdy walls could not keep out evil. He'd been beaten within these walls, had seen his parents murdered, had watched the timbers go up in flames as his kidnappers bore him away, screaming for help that would come too late. So, knowing it was futile to keep evil out, he'd instead relished in the evil that dwelt with him inside. His devil's white-gloved hands brushed Ciel's hair and buttoned his shirts far more gently than the rough, brutal hands of his human captors. With Sebastian bound to serve him, Ciel had, perhaps naively, let down his guard.

It didn't help that Lady Perard was a distant aunt by marriage on his father's side, newly returned from the continent after the death of her husband. Her hair was silver, and she smelled like roses and powder. When Ciel had first greeted her in the foyer, she'd gripped him by the shoulders and remarked how very much he looked like his father. Over tea in the parlor, she'd described how Vincent Phantomhive, aged 10, had once terrified her half out of her wits by climbing up onto the roof of her house and balancing, one-legged, on the head of the gargoyle. And later, when Sebastian left to clear away the tea service, she'd taken a little wrapped candy from her purse.

"Do you remember how I used to bring you these when I visited? It's been such a long time."

"I'm afraid not. I was very young then."

"You're still very young," she laughed, but her eyes looked sad. She offered him the sweet. "Well, you can remember this one, at least!"

So he'd taken the candy from her, studying it for a long moment. Naturally, as head of the Funtom Company, Ciel was familiar with his competitors' products. He didn't recall ever seeing this particular striped wrapper before. Unwrapped, the sweet gleamed like a ruby on the crumpled foil.

"Where did you find this?" Ciel asked. "I don't recognize the manufacturer."

"It's just an old family recipe," she said with a wave of her hand. "Vincent was always so peeved that I wouldn't give it to him! He wanted to market them, can you imagine?"

Ciel considered the candy in his hand. "The color is remarkable. It would probably sell quite well, depending on the taste of course." Curiously, he popped it into his mouth.

The first taste reminded him of strawberry wine, sugary sweet but with a darker note that balanced the flavor, kept it from being too saccharine. He sucked it contemplatively, trying to taste why his father had wanted this recipe. Funtom already had its own line of strawberry sweets, after all, though their recipe lacked the claret richness of this one. As the sweet dissolved in his mouth, a sharper, almost medicinal taste emerged that was entirely new to him. Too late, Ciel realized what it must be.

He spat the treat out, but already he could feel the poison's effects: his mouth, throat, and stomach were beginning to burn, as though they'd been seared with acid. He could feel his body start to shake.

"Just an old family recipe," Lady Perard said, beaming benevolently down at him as Ciel tumbled to the floor with spasming muscles. "I'm ever so glad you like it!"

"Se- Se- Sebas-" Ciel gasped, trying to form the demon's name through nearly paralyzed lips. A sharp pain ripped through his gut, matched almost immediately by an agonizing burn in his marked eye. A fraction of a second later, Sebastian materialized over him, a black fog given form and shape.

"Master!"

Sebastian glanced from Ciel's pain-wracked body to the spit-slick sweet gathering lint on the carpet, and his expression twisted with anger. Lady Perard screamed, knocking her chair over in her haste to flee the parlor. Sebastian ignored her, kneeling over Ciel and gathering him close with surprisingly gentle hands. He cradled Ciel's head in the crook of his arm. Through blurring vision, Ciel watched as Sebastian raised his hand to his mouth, biting the finger of his glove and drawing it away to reveal the glowing sigil of their covenant. With bare fingers, Sebastian ripped off Ciel's eye patch, brushing sweaty hair away from Ciel's forehead to fully illuminate his inhumanly beautiful face in the violet light of the contract seal. The last thing Ciel remembered was Sebastian's mouth closing over his own.

 _You bastard,_ he wanted to say. _You haven't earned my soul yet._ But even without Sebastian's tongue in his mouth, lapping away the poison, Ciel was entirely beyond speech at that point. As darkness claimed him, Ciel thought, to his horror, that being kissed by Sebastian really wasn't such a bad way to go.

* * *

Later, Sebastian will describe how he captured Lady Perrard a mile from the manor, slowly, methodically breaking each of her bones in turn before finally drawing an eyedropper from his pocket and administering her own poison a drop at a time -- first her eyes, then her ears and nose, and finally her mouth.

Ciel will chide him for it, insisting he should have kept her alive. Who knows what information she might have provided, perhaps even into the death of his parents?

"What were you thinking?!" he'll snap, and Sebastian's eyes will flare red.

Only that she nearly stole something I value quite dearly, Young Master. Had I not needed to tend to you in your recovery, I would have taken far more liberties with her death, I can assure you."

And Ciel will know Sebastian is talking about his soul, not _him_ but it will warm him to the heart all the same, much to his annoyance.

* * *

It took a week for the poison to work its way out of his system, a week of sweat-drenched sheets and violent shudders, his body wracked with alternating fevers and chills. He woke, now and then, to brief, hazy flashes of reality. Sebastian running a cool sponge over his sweaty chest and back. Sebastian urging him to swallow water or lukewarm soup, both excruciating against his burned mouth and throat. Sebastian's strong hands balancing him over the chamber pot. Sebastian cradling him against the chest while Mey-Rin remade the bed with fresh linens. Always Sebastian, at least until the nightmares claimed Ciel again, dragging him back below the surface of his consciousness.

The nightmares were neither brief nor hazy.

Again and again, Ciel pads barefoot down the corridor to his parents' bedroom, opening the door to stare in horror at the blood-splattered wallpaper, the sheets stained red with gore. In his nightmares, he can smell the blood, feel the bile rise in his throat even as the men with the knives straighten and turn to see him standing frozen in the doorway. He turns to run, but not before their rough hands seized him, bearing him down.

Again and again, the cultists laugh behind their masks as they watch Ciel sobbing filthy and humiliated on the floor of his cage.

_"A special lamb for you to play with tonight, ladies and gentlemen! Very special indeed!"_

Again the brand, the sickening scent of his own burning flesh. Again the knife poised over his chest. But this time, no demon steps in to stop time, accept the sacrifice, steal the lamb away from the altar. Instead, the knife completes its downward arc and Ciel wakes, not to a field of feathers and a raven perched on a withered oak, but to his own bed. Once again, he's ten years old, hearing shouts from his parents' room in the middle of the night.

Often during that long, hellish week, he woke with his blistered mouth aching from screaming Sebastian's name, praying for the devil not to forsake him. He will remember, later, Sebastian's soothing voice in his ear.

"I am here, My Lord."

Later, Ciel will blush hot with the memory of how he wept in Sebastian's arms, how his fingers dug into the demon's waistcoat, refusing to let go.

"Make it stop!" he begged ( _begged_ he will recall with mortification), all but climbing into Sebastian's lap to escape the nightmares that claimed him every time he closed his eyes. "Make it stop, Sebastian, please!"

He will remember Sebastian's lips on his forehead, his hands stroking comforting circles against Ciel's back. "It's a dream, My Lord, it will pass," he said, tipping Ciel back down into the pillows and delivering him once more into sleep.

He didn't know how many hellish cycles passed before he managed to grab hold of the threads of himself that still remembered he was Ciel Phantomhive. But during one brief moment of lucidity, he gasped, "Sebastian! Make it stop!" as he had a dozen or more times before, but this time, he pulled together the last of his strength and yelled, "That is an order!" 

Sebastian's eyes went wide with surprise. For an incredulous moment, he simply looked at Ciel. Then a chuckle escaped his lips, and he lifted the candelabra, blowing it out to shroud the room in darkness.

"Yes, My Lord."

The bed dipped beneath his butler's weight, and Ciel heard a rustle that might be wings unfolding, might be Sebastian removing his heavy coat. Sebastian slid beneath the covers with him, arranging Ciel within the protective curve of his body. The last thing he heard was Sebastian's rich voice crooning to him in a language so ancient Ciel couldn't even recognize it, something between a murderous lullaby and a sin-blackened hymn.

* * *

The next time he woke from dreamless sleep to total darkness. Sebastian's arms enclosed him, held him small and safe against his chest. Ciel's head was pillowed against Sebastian's shoulder, his thin leg draped over Sebastian's pressed trousers. 

He could no longer smell the poison sweat exuded by his body, or feel the burns in his mouth and throat. Ciel could not even sense the bed beneath him, though the sheets must be twisted and drenched. All of his senses felt muffled, cushioned by glossy feathers.He and Sebastian might as well be floating in the night sky, as Ciel had floated once between life and death as they struck their contact. The whole world was empty, save for the two of them.

So complete was Sebastian's embrace, and so perfect the darkness surrounding them, Ciel half felt he had died, his frail, human body enfolded into the expansive shadow that was Sebastian's true form. Sleepily, he reached a hand into that shadow, stroked something that might be glossy feathers, or silken hair, or wispy fog, or perhaps some infernal union of all three.

"Sebastian?" he whispered.

One magenta eye opened in the darkness, the slit pupil focusing on Ciel. "What is it, Young Master?"

"Is this what it will be like?" Ciel asked. "When you swallow my soul?"

Sebastian's laugh warmed the darkness. "No, My Lord." Rolling onto his side and propping himself up on one elbow, he gazed down at Ciel almost fondly, lowering his head to rub their cheeks together. Ciel felt so comfortable and safe in that moment that he didn't even protest the liberty. Sebastian's breath tickled Ciel's ear as he brought his mouth close, and promised, "That will be better."

* * *

Later, Ciel will wake in Sebastian's arms, completely recovered and just as mortified. Sebastian will unsuccessfully try to hide a smile at Ciel's disgruntled expression before rising with inhuman grace to leave the bedroom. Less than thirty seconds later, he will knock perfunctorily on the door before wheeling in the tea tray.

And then there will be business to attend. A missive from the queen. All of the work that piles up during a long illness. Ciel will order Sebastian out of his sight and lose himself for a few hours in sales figures and crime rates, trying to forget the peace he felt wrapped in Sebastian's arms. 

Later that night, Sebastian will kneel beside the bed, keeping hold of Ciel's hand after he removes his rings. He'll meet Ciel's eyes over their clasped fingers, and ask, "Is there anything else I can do for you, My Lord?"

And Ciel will sigh before roughly running his free hand through Sebastian's hair. "Yes. Stay."

The candelabra will briefly illuminate Sebastian's fanged smile before he extinguishes it with a breath, plunging them both into darkness.

"Always, My Lord."

The End


End file.
